The reunification of Germany happened first on the dance floor.
The party that started the night the Berlin Wall fell on November 9, 1989, kept going as the Ossies of the collapsed East German state and the Berliners of the west came together looking to celebrate.
Almost overnight, remembers Mark Reeder, a Mancunian DJ who had been living in West Berlin since 1978, the city’s tiny clubbing scene exploded as people hosted raves in once-shuttered industrial buildings.
Germans from East and West celebrating on the wall the day after the borders opened on November 9, 1989. Credit:AP
“The cloud of imminent nuclear holocaust had been lifted from the city with the fall of the wall and everyone was united on the dance floor,” says Reeder.
Faced with the first opportunity to choose their musical tastes, the Berliners of the east chose techno, a genre of technologically created dance music first labelled by a 1980s Frankfurt DJ to categorise acts such as Depeche Mode, New Order and Germany’s own Kraftwerk.
But the genre mutated rapidly in the clubs over the next three decades to become the defining soundtrack of Berlin.
“It was mainly instrumental music,” Reeder says. “Techno had no difficult-to-understand English lyrics and it was also sci-fi modern sounding too.”
But now Berlin’s 24-hour party people are fighting for the survival of their scene by campaigning for UNESCO cultural heritage protection for techno.
Even before the pandemic, the German capital’s rising rents had started closing down some clubs, but the long lockdowns of Europe’s many COVID waves put the city’s raves on the endangered list.
The scene had sprung out of urban decay.
Disbanded, derelict buildings along what was once no-man’s-land were up for grabs, to anyone, for any use.
“Available to drag drinks, a generator, a smoke machine and a strobe light and make a party, an illegal party and at that point, the Eastie cops had no jurisdiction over no-man’s-land,” Reeder says.
By 1991, clubs were spontaneously taking over.
Party at Berlin club E-Werk in 1994.Credit:Getty
“Tresor was the first, then came WMF and eventually the E-Werk, all within dancing distance of each other – arguably, Berlin is the birthplace of what we understand as clubbing today,” says Reeder. “It has inspired the world.”
Bruno Schmidt, who began DJing in London and Leeds, moved to Berlin in 2016 to take a job in music publishing. After two years he quit to practise the art full time.
He says he owes his career to Berlin.
“This city created my career, it wouldn’t have happened in another place,” the 33-year-old says.
He recalls DJing in a former Stasi building working alongside “complete anarchists,” and says it’s not just the country’s history, but also its personality that’s been the driver of electro’s success.
“There’s the oppression, …….